


Future Fic

by Reera the Red (nimmieamee)



Series: Notes from the Wizarding World [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:14:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/Reera%20the%20Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets for future generations, because nextgen is the best gen. Or. Well. At least the gen with the least baggage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Very Small Worry

Being quite clever, Lily waited until a day when her father was thoroughly frazzled, beset on all sides by sycophants at an MLE affair, becoming shouty and very contrary, and certain to forget the conversation as soon as it was over.

"Dad, did you lose your Parselmouth abilities after you beat Voldemort?" she asked.

"Yes," Harry said, perplexed. "Why?"

"No reason. Oh, look. Is that James over there stealing the keys to the holding cells?"

And when Harry whirled about to locate the inveterate vexation that was James, she skipped off to the courtyard.

"It’s a bit worrisome," she said.

"Ssssomething of an underssstatement," answered the snake.


	2. Fred

Fred was relaxed and unassuming and well-behaved and a Chaser like his mother, and also Head Boy. He was certainly his grandmother’s favorite. He rarely lost Gryffindor any points. He did not play many pranks. He rarely made jokes at others’ expense. He thought it might remind Dad too much of a certain other Fred, and this Fred was far too conscientious to let that happen.

"Besides," he said, "If I start blowing up toilet seats like my cousins then the old man is sure to give me an earful."

Then he closed his eyes and grinned. “Just  _one_  earful, though. Get it?”


	3. Snuffles

James, like all little boys, wanted a dog more than anything, and like all cherished firstborn sons, he got what he wanted. But it was to be a surprise, and so his introduction to the animal was a very sudden snapping of teeth in the garden, which made him afraid.

 _What if it’s the Grim?_  he thought, running, terrified, back to where his mother mother was de-gnoming.

But the dog only bounded after him, and, seeing the fierce little gnomes ready to bite the child, turned its teeth on  _them_. It was already loyal to him, and James realized this soon enough.

"I thought he wasn’t my friend," he explained very solemnly to his father that evening, "That he was evil. But he loves me even though I’ve never seen him before. What should I call him?"

"Snuffles," said his father decisively.

"That’s a funny name," said James.

“‘tupid name,” said his younger brother.

"Not at all. I can think of at least one other person who would’ve found it very amusing," said Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Ginny was like, "Dammit, Harry, stop naming things after dead people. I thought we had this discussion when you christened the goldfish Mad-Eye."


	4. Romeo & Juliet (minus the suicide, plus some exploding toilets)

Young Zachary Zonko’s family was jovial, funloving, and merry. But for three whole generations they had declared themselves the bitter enemies of certain commercial interlopers. Certain fools who’d upended the magical joke market with canny creams and sinister snackboxes, products that appealed only to the unwashed masses. Certain upstarts that had no understanding of how the true, the lofty, the ancient arbiters of magical comedy were naturally the Zonko family. Certain rivals that, when pranked with an aim to be put out of business, pranked back and pranked  _hard_.

But Zachary Zonko did not care. When he laid eyes on George Weasley’s great-granddaughter at Platform 9 3/4, he thought she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. And when, through a combination of untested Wheezes products and sheer cunning, she laughingly divested him of his ears, his robes, his underpants, and his dignity?

Zachary Zonko couldn’t help it. He fell in love.


	5. Al

He was at that petulant, lanky age. The age of shouts and needless melodrama. When everything said by anyone younger was a waste of time, and anything said by anyone older was bound to be worthless. Especially,  _especially,_ "You have your father’s eyes."

The fact was: he loved his father a great deal, but practically everyone carried on about dad all the time. Practically everyone assumed Al would be just like him, or that Al would be a failure if he wasn’t, or that Al would be a failure if he was. It was a lot to live up to.

And anyway Al was not a love-starved orphan himself, so such an observation would not produce a wide-eyed, semi-pleading, “You knew my parents?” but instead a rather annoyed, “Merlin’s balls, I happen to own a mirror.  _I know_.”


	6. Rose

"Now, I’m not surprised by your obsession with impossible foreign languages, house elf culture, weird bits of arithmantic theory—" said Dad.

"And chess," put in Mum, with a roll of her eyes in his direction.

"And chess," said Dad, "The chess is very nice, actually. Your choice of study partner, on the other hand—"

"It’s not like I’m going to marry Scorpius Malfoy," said Rose, "It’s just that he manages to keep up. But I don’t even like him that much. Last week I summoned a flock of birds to attack his face."

This did not seem to comfort her parents as much as she though it would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scorpius's father will be hearing about this.


	7. Teddy (& Harry)

Since he knew full well that his parents had been talented at Defense, he was very unhappy with himself when he couldn’t cast the Patronus Charm. Not even a wisp. Not that it mattered, anyway.

"I don’t have a happy enough memory, I guess. I thought of everything Gran said about Mum, and I thought of everything you said about Dad, but none of that worked."  
"Did you think of your gran? Did you think of me? Your friends? Your life isn’t all about the dead and dying. It’s important to remember them. But to let ourselves wallow is…is to make every day about regret. And fear. Life’s too short for fear."  
"I  _know_. But—”  
"And nowadays you’re unlikely to run into a Dementor anytime soon."  
"It wasn’t one, really. It was the Boggart Mr. Weasley wrangled up at Shell Cottage."  
"Oh," said his godfather, in a very different tone, "Well. Then why be discouraged? I’m impressed. That suggests what you fear most of all is — fear. Someone very wise once told me that that’s — well. It’s very wise, Teddy."  
  
That wasn’t at all the kind of thing Teddy cared about right now. He’d made a fool of himself in front of Mr. Weasley, and he was soft, stupid, untalented, and weak. He was no successor to his parents. He couldn’t even be expected to remember them.   
  
"Why don’t I teach you?" Harry said, "I learned to cast a Patronus pretty young. But only because I had a fantastic teacher."


	8. Molly & Lucy

Molly and Lucy were not quite identical. This was a comfort to their father, a loving but busy man who, flying six times per day to the Ministry and back, would not have had the wherewithal to tell them apart if they had been. And also to their cousins, who knew that this made it harder for the girls to prank them. And also to their grandparents, who would have felt a twinge of unhappiness at discovering two more children who could exchange identities as easily as they exchanged jumpers.

But their favorite Uncle would always pretend that they were.

"So it’s Lolly and Moosy again," he would say, shaking his head, "Can never tell you apart."

And although everyone older than the girls knew this was actually a very sad joke to tell, like all stupid family jokes it was only meant to comfort Molly and Lucy, and it did. It was something special and shared between them and Uncle George. To have someone who loved you enough to joke with you and play silly games and give you a rather nonsensical nickname — that meant something.


	9. James Sirius

His father will not speak to him. His sister will, but she is ever-careful about it, deliberately not mentioning how disappointed everyone is. His brother sees him in Knockturn, and makes dithering, awkward remarks about how thin he looks, and how much better it would be if he just settled it with dad once and for all. His mother says, “You’re breaking his heart, taking a job with her. Being your own man, I suppose, but breaking your dad’s heart all the same.”

This sort of behavior crops up sometimes on her side of the family, so she seems comfortable with it. But by nature she is entirely partisan, and as far as anyone can tell she is entirely on dad’s side.

"How is that old roach, anyway?" Mum adds.

"Oh, all spite and cigarette smoke," he says, "Demands seven hundred words in an hour. Sees leads where there’s only gossip. Lives on youth-rejuvenating serum and bitterness."

"Like her that much, do you?" Mum says.

"Loads," he says, and isn’t even lying. His cousins are all knife-sharp wit, and his uncles have a hidden occasional cruelty to them. They are a family with an edge, though no one will admit it. So hard people delight him. Mean people, funny people who poke and prod at others — they make him grin. Why would they think  _she_ should be any different?

"You’re not always perfect yourselves, you know," he’ll tell his father eventually, "You’ve got just as much darkness in you as anybody."

"Planning on using that against us, are you?" his uncle will shoot back before his dad can say a word, "The next  _Prophet_  headline, another smear against your old man, but this time with your name on the byline — I bet Rita would  _wet_  herself, she’d—”

"She’s a dreadful person," his aunt will say, "And so are you, if you think—"

"I think it can be about more than smears!" he’ll tell them, "Fine. Do you want to know the truth? I think the Prophet’s rotten, the way we do news is rotten: the celebrity worship and the lies, and the way we conceal things — gloss over Squib abuse and inequality, hide it behind what Warbeck’s wearing this week. But I think that’s not going to  _change_  if all we do is sit about and complain!”

"And you’re the one to change it, are you?" his dad will say coldly. "By falling in with Skeeter and her bullies?"

And, defeated, he’ll say, “I’m a bit of a bully myself, I guess. But I’m willing to use that for a good cause.”

And eventually, his dad will understand what he means by that, and he’ll Floo-call the dank little Knockturn flat, where his once-coddled boy is holed up churning out byline after byline, and he’ll say, “What’s this about, then? Not another three pages on Padma Patil’s failing marriage, I hope.”

"Half a page is all she’s giving me, about how we’re invading traditional centaur territories," he’ll reply, "She wanted less than that, but if she wants to say she’s got a  _Potter_  in her pocket—”

"If she thinks that, then she doesn’t know the Potters."

"We’re our own men," James will say, delighted.

"Well. I don’t know about that," Harry will say, "But we’re not quite what you’d expect, us Potter-Weasley sorts. We’re a bit angry, you know? Explosive. Not perfect. But I can trust you, I think, to use that for good."


	10. Roxanne

Laughing Roxanne would never be a prefect. Her grandparents feared she might not even graduate — not because she was stupid, for in fact she was enormously clever, but because she was so determined to enjoy herself.

Here was Roxanne in bright dress robes, wittier and wiser than all her contemporaries, and yet choosing to dance the night away, not to study for OWLs. And here was sharp Roxanne putting down some big-headed cousin so merrily and so quickly that he wasn’t to realize he’d been insulted until next week. But never was Roxanne particularly committed to anything, never did she announce plans to try for Head Girl, or an intent to someday become Minister. No, instead she built marvelous contraptions out of granddad’s plugs for his amusement, recreated the Ford Anglia from some spare parts and flew the younger children to visit Aunt Fleur on the shore, caused fights between a dashing-but-cruel Ravenclaw and a pretty-faced-but-arrogant Hufflepuff, both determined to accompany her to Madam Puddifoot’s.

Only to take a Slytherin instead, because she thought it might be funny. Always a laugh with Roxanne.

It was her father’s fault. From the moment of her birth, he seemed to sense a kindred spirit. Something seemed to have been restored to him. And so she’d always been adored; she had never felt that there was an inadequate and broken part of her, a part that needed to be perfected, some missing element which might only be corrected with a shiny prefect’s badge, with glory and adulation, with the title of Minister.

And her father was comforted by this. She would never know what it meant to be fragmented, incomplete.

 


	11. The Sisters

They were raised traditionally, taught that Muggles were distinct and ought to remain that way, subtly reminded at every turn that the old magical ways were best, measured according to the laws of their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Nothing could be better than their family name, they learned. Blood determined all, they learned. And one must never betray one’s family. Never.

The first fell in love with a blood purist of the highest order, and the second with a lackadaisical duffer no better than a Muggle, and the third fell somewhere in between. And their father considered the laws he’d impressed upon them and despaired, and their grandfather considered the family’s waning traditions and did the same.

But their great-grandmother did not despair. She only invited them all to tea, and when each of the three Malfoy girls each looked down her nose at the others, Narcissa coolly said, “You look like you’ve smelled something bad. Very rude. I taught you better than that, my dear.”

The three sisters would not grow apart. Not this time.


End file.
